The Local Advertising War Will Be a Clash of the Internet Titans

The Local Advertising War Will Be a Clash of the Internet Titans

311Share

203

Share311

203

email

share

email

share

When Google upgraded their Local Business Center to Google Places, it launched the opening salvo in what we expect to be a long war for local advertising dollars.

With local advertising revenues expected to reach $144.9 billion in 2014 according to BIA/Kelsey — and more and more dollars are shifting away from traditional media toward digital media buys — the new war for local ad spend will be a battle between the Internet () titans and social networks.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Foursquare, Yelp and even Apple are all attempting to carve out their own niche offering for local advertising dollars. Who will succeed remains to be seen, but this is a fight you won’t want to miss.

---

The War of the Worlds

---

The challengers fighting for local advertising budgets can be separated into three categories: Search, consumer review sites and social networks. The mobile component to each sector is also quite significant, especially given that the mobile web is taking over the world, and that mobile search is still a nascent space — one that appears to be more app-driven than search-engine driven.

Each category also has its own distinct advantage and key players, but what Google has managed to do with Google Places is straddle all three sectors with an extremely valuable proposition for local businesses that includes free stuff, cheap advertising rates and the promise of exposure.

Google also has a very strong mobile presence, but their adherence to the standard search model for discovery could make them susceptible to competitors vying for local ad dollars.

---

Search

---

In the local search space we can include the obvious players: Google and Microsoft, the latter of which will grab more share once the Yahoo search deal is implemented. Both behemoths are fast-adding features to their search services to better facilitate local search queries. Bing () even has Foursquare data in maps.

For businesses, the advantages of being highlighted in local search results over competitors is significant. Sure it’s 100% paid media, but it’s also exposure at one of the primary touch points for service and restaurant queries on the web.

Google clearly recognizes the value of a targeted ad. With Google Places they also re-introduced a simpler, faster, cheaper way for their local business customers to advertise (formerly called enhanced listings). Business can pay a $25 per month flat fee to use Tags to make their listings more prominent on Google.com and Google Maps (). Included in Tags are Posts, which are like status updates for Place Pages and will appear as part of the search listing.

Tags show up as yellow markers that users can scroll over to view promoted features or coupons. While Tags are ads, they’re essentially Google’s take on Promoted Tweets, and make listings stand out from the crowd. If done right, they could be useful for both businesses and consumers.

When thinking about local search, don’t forget about Twitter. The social network also happens to double as a search engine, and they’re aggressively moving in the local direction with tweet geotagging that can identify points of interest. This extra layer of data will enable Twitter users to search locally, and see a real-time stream of nearby tweets.

Couple these new Twitter features with Promoted Tweets — Twitter’s definition of search advertising — and you have a situation ripe for local businesses. The key here is whether or not Twitter can prove why users should share their location and why local businesses should care.

In thinking about search, remember that mobile will factor into the future in a big way. Steve Jobs believes that most mobile search happens via applications, which means that Apple — which now owns alternative mobile search application Siri () — could play an important role in the mobile local advertising battle.

---

Consumer Review Sites

---

For the purpose of this post, consumer review sites like Yelp and City Search are being distinguished from other social networks because their primary focus is on user-generated place reviews.

The advertising opportunities on these sites are certainly geared towards the businesses that consumers are reviewing. That could create a conflict of interest for some networks, and in the case of Yelp, many small businesses felt that they were being bullied to pay to advertise in order to remove negative reviews. Yelp has maintained that this was absolutely not the case, and was a misunderstanding of their review filtering process.

As such, they’ve made changes in recent weeks to lessen the confusion, but now that Google Places offers a handful of business-friendly features, we could easily see local businesses jump ship with their advertising budgets.

On this feature front, the addition of service areas is quite significant. So too are the QR code window decals and free business photo shoots. Plus, if Google opts to take Google Maps inside businesses, there will be even more incentive for companies to own their Google Place Page.

In a previous post, I made a case for how the new consumer review is all about you, and that location, premium content and relationships are critical to the relevancy of the consumer review.

In this sense, Foursquare certainly factors into the consumer review equation. Their tips and content partnerships mean that their location-aware mobile social network is perfectly poised to deliver up tightly packaged consumer reviews that are place- and time-relevant. This means that smart local businesses will allocate more of their budgets to checkin rewards and mayor specials.

Lest we forget, there’s a Foursquare-esque component of Google’s Place Pages. All Place Pages include consumer reviews with both text and star ratings. These reviews are also easily accessible via Google Buzz for Mobile and Google Maps.

---

Social Networks

---

The primary social networks embroiled in the local advertising war include Twitter, Foursquare, Google and soon Facebook.

Google’s social networking endeavors have left plenty to be desired. Google Buzz () launched to an excited tech audience but enthusiasm has since faded away. There’s also Google Latitude — an always-on location-sharing service that started as a Loopt clone — which now has 3 million active users. It’s the intersection of Buzz and Latitude on mobile devices that will help Google nail down local advertising dollars.

Between Buzz for Mobile’s checkin model and Latitude, Google has a lot of information that they can both display for consumer/business use as well as use behind the scenes. Since Buzz checkins are associated with Place Pages and Place Pages have dashboards, Google has the opportunity to compete with Foursquare’s business dashboards. They also have the data to create accurate behavioral analysis around location, based on the implicit location-sharing of Latitude users. Take that and the Google name, and you have something quite compelling.

Unfortunately for Google, Facebook is most certainly moving into the same space. Given their size and trendiness, we can assume that Facebook will be a strong competitor and a viable contender for local advertising dollars. The leaked McDonalds-Facebook location partnership tells us that diners will be able to check-in at restaurants with activity and food items being posted back to Facebook. How exactly this will work or function we don’t know, but what is certain is that once Facebook knows where their 400 million members are, they can target advertising by location.

Twitter is really trying to ramp up relevancy of geo-located tweets, but they’ve never quite been able to do what Foursquare has done — demonstrate the significance of location-sharing. As discussed above, there could be a perfect storm brewing for the day when geo-aware tweets are tied to places and Promoted Tweets are available to all potential advertisers.

Once that happens, we predict that advertisers will be able to target their Promoted Tweets by location and not just keywords (as it stands now). Should they go down this path, this could be their real secret sauce, especially given what we’ve already seen from Virgin America in the Promoted Tweets department.

In the social networking space, don’t count out David — a.k.a. Foursquare — amongst these internet Goliaths. Foursquare has pioneered the location-sharing movement by making checkins valuable, if not cool. The company is hotter than ever, and its partnerships — especially with the likes of Starbucks — continually ensure that it has something the competition doesn’t. Its user base is growing astronomically, and now that the users are there, businesses are clamoring to catch up.

Foursquare has also been nimble in finding ways to cater to local businesses. Early on, it allowed business owners to offer specials to mayors and those that check in. More recently, it introduced a simple way for businesses to sign-up and gain access to the business dashboard with checkin analysis. Its offering not only parallels what Google is doing with Place Pages, but bests it.

View the Original article

Local Search Engine Optimization SEO Sacramento

How Mobile Technology is Affecting Local News Coverage

This series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive the blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway.

Listen up, journalists — your cellphone is more than just a channel by which to reach sources, your editor and sustenance (you have the local Thai joint on speed dial, don’t front): It’s an essential tool for both local news-gathering and dissemination.

Mashable (Mashable) talked to reporters, publications and experts in the field to get the lowdown on how your cell is affecting local news coverage. We might not be able to get you to change your ring tone — “Poker Face,” really? — but we hope we can change how you’re using your iPhone, Droid, Palm or BlackBerry.

Read on for some actionable ideas for how you can make your mobile more than just another channel by which your mother can nag you about how you should have been a lawyer instead.
An Army of Citizen Journalists

If the recent spat of natural disasters and uprisings have proven anything, it’s that when it comes to local news coverage, audience engagement is truly an asset. Although the advent of the mojo (mobile journalist) is truly upon us — journalists are increasingly using mobile phones to collect video and photos and even to file stories — we also have a veritable army of citizen journalists out there armed with their own increasingly more advanced reporting tools: mobile phones. And, as we have seen, they’re more than eager to help a journo out.

Take, for example, the meteorite that zoomed over the Midwest back in April. Immediately after the event transpired, news stations took to Twitter in an attempt to get TwitPics and footage of the occurrence. Among the most successful was local Wisconsin news outlet, WISCTV_News3, who garnered an ample collection of cellphone pictures and YouTube (YouTube) videos.

According to News Director Colin Benedict, the rapid influx of content was due, in part, to the strong relationship the station already had with its viewers. “We use Twitter and Facebook every single day in our newscast,” he says. “Because when those big events happen, you have to have that relationship built already. We need to be in these spaces because that’s where our viewers are.”

Although the station doesn’t yet have a smartphone app -– it’s working on it –- it does have a distinct advantage when snagging this citizen footage: familiarity.

Parker Polidor — the president of Cell Journalist, a platform that allows folks to easily submit video from cellphones and other devices to local news stations –- would agree. Cell Journalist has 85 clients countrywide, and was instrumental in furnishing user footage during the flooding in Nashville, Tennessee, at the beginning of May.

“On a local TV level, this is where [local media] has a distinct advantage over all other forms of media,” he says. “When they issue the on-air call to action, they get flooded with content –- no pun intended. Over the course of that weekend, we received a little over 40,000 pieces of content submitted here in Nashville and a couple thousand in Memphis.”

By submitting footage like this to local stations, viewers and consumers feel like they’re a part of the story. “Any time a user sees their content on air, that gives them motivation to submit more content,” Polidor says. So, it would behoove the local reporter, station or paper to use social media to connect with these walking camera men and women, who make for excellent sources of information when disaster strikes.
Using Geolocation to Crowdsource

There is a distinct untapped market here when it comes to mobile crowdsourcing: geolocation (i.e. tools like Foursquare (Foursquare), Gowalla (Gowalla), etc). Your first thought here might be: “Why do I care who’s checking in at Chipotle at any given moment?” And we would agree — for the most part. But think about how tools like these could be used creatively. For example, Tracy Swartz, a journalist for Chicago’s RedEye paper, has found a novel use for Foursquare: She’s a transit reporter, so she scours checkins at various subway stations for news about delays, fare jumpers and track conditions.

This is only one way in which a journalist has figured out how to use the location-based tool. Now think how helpful Foursquare could be for a food reviewer (I’ve seen people mention things like vermin in checkins at various restaurants and bars), a crime reporter (I can easily see someone reporting gang activity or shots fired via a Foursquare checkin) or even an entertainment reporter (tons of people usually equates to something cool –- find out which concerts and music venues are racking up the checkins and proceed accordingly).

As more and more people get hip to Foursquare in your community –- 40 million checkins ain’t bad –- we would suggest becoming early adopters. Download this tool and start digging -– at the very least, you’ll score a mayorship and some serious street cred among the tech cool kids.
Putting Mobile First

I have a vivid memory of my grad school dean holding up his cellphone during various assemblies, imploring us to start thinking about how we’re going to get the news on “this,” rather than “this” –- the latter “this” being a newspaper. Back then, my immediate reaction was: “Ha, what? Who wants to read a story on a tiny screen?” Well, two years later, and I’m eating that thought bubble.

Although smartphone use is not as widespread among the majority of average consumers as it is within, say, the tech community — of the top five mobile phone manufacturers, only Motorola and RIM have made significant inroads in the smartphone space in the U.S. –- it is growing. And with more and more handsets and form factors on the market, the mobile space is indeed important when it comes to news dissemination (hell, the iPad sold one million units in the first month — that’s a huge market for mobile offerings right there). Still, at present, the space is a true work in progress.

Reporters and publications have to start thinking of the news in terms of “mobile first” –- i.e. Thinking about how to distribute content via mobile devices first, said Stephen Buttry, director of community engagement for TBD.com (a soon-to-be-launched digital local news operation covering the Washington area for Allbritton Communications).

“News organizations need to move quickly, and looking back on our history with the web, we know their tendency is not to move quickly,” he says. “It was easily 10 years or more into the history of news on the web that we even started hearing ‘web-first.’ … If we don’t make mobile our first priority, we’re going to screw it up like we did with the web.”

Folks like David Beard, editor of The Boston Globe’s Boston.com, have seen firsthand how quickly the news delivery landscape has changed. “When I took this job maybe two years ago, I was mostly the browser guy,” he says. “We had e-mail alerts and text alerts and not much more. Now we’re on five or six different platforms.”

Currently, Boston.com has two iPhone apps — a news app and a photo blog app called The Big Picture — and Beard says they’re doing fairly well. “We’re up triple the mobile pageviews this year from last year at this time,” he explains. Boston.com is also currently working on an iPad app.

Still, the local website, like myriad other sites, has a lot of obstacles to overcome when it comes to making inroads in the mobile space: deciding whether or not to adapt to more than one platform (Android (Android), Palm, etc), as well as weathering the battle between Adobe and Apple.

(It would be an entire other feature at this juncture to get into the whole Flash vs. HTML debate, but suffice it to say that many publications are trying to figure out the best way to get video on mobile handsets. According to Jeff Whatcott, SVP of marketing at popular video platform Brightcove, “When the iPad came out… we actually had so many requests coming in from so many customers that we decided it would be most efficient to just book a hotel room in New York, and we did the same thing in London, to get all of our customers together. That was something we haven’t seen before.”)

Still, folks like Buttry are not impressed with most local news apps –- which aren’t really that different from their mobile sites (which are essentially the website shrunk down to fit a smaller screen). Yet he sees any local news site with an app as moving in the right direction. “I’m glad that they’re getting their feet wet,” he says. “Because those are skills and experiences they need to develop. And if the first one is pretty lame, that’s OK –- don’t stop there. Because the first news story you wrote was pretty lame.”
Taking Advantage of Location-Aware Abilities

Again, however, having an app is only the beginning of the story. What we have not yet fully realized is the location-aware nature of the mobile phone and how vital that is when it comes to delivering local news.

According to Amy L. Webb, CEO and principal of Webbmedia Group, LLC, “If you encode your content correctly –- to really be able to deliver people real-time news that’s about where they are at that moment — that’s hyperlocal news that makes sense. The problem is that most news organizations aren’t thinking that way. They’re still thinking in terms of zip codes.” What she means is that we have the ability to tie news to exact street corners, and we should be taking advantage of that.

Recently, we’ve seen several brands and publications making partnerships with Foursquare in an attempt to make ample use of geo-location. The Wall Street Journal is probably the most notable example of late. Basically, the paper’s partnership with the location-based service allows readers to collect badges for checking in at various New York locations, but –- more interestingly –- it also seeks to integrate news consumption into the game.

For example, the publication has added tips to places like Yankee Stadium that include facts about the location as well as links to stories. In fact, just the other week, The Wall Street Journal broke the news about a suspicious package found in Times Square via a Foursquare tip. Essentially, the publication is bringing us the news in a whole new way –- instead of reading stories for pleasure or leisure (via the printed page) or searching for information (via the web), The WSJ is making news dissemination about discovery.

Of course, it may be prudent at this point to recall that Foursquare only has around one million members, so it’s probably not the best way to reach your entire audience at present, but it’s this kind of innovation that people like Webb hope to see more publications experimenting with.

The same goes for aggregators on mobile platforms, which seek to bring a location-specific array of news to consumers. EveryBlock –- which is basically the granddaddy of location-based news aggregators –- has matured and developed over the years, adding a location-aware iPhone app that delivers a selection of local news to your handset. Newer services, like Fwix –- whose iPad app has been a huge success –- are seeking to do the same thing.

These services seek to provide users with the most information — from the most sources — about a given location. “Local news has to come from a ton of different sources,” says Fwix founder Darian Shirazi. “It just can’t come from one source anymore. We’ve been a central location to collect all that news together.” EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty would agree, “The more location-specific news there is, the better position we’re in, because we aggregate all that,” he says. “We love the fact that Twitter has launched geo-coding Tweets, because, in theory, it means there’s more geo-coded news out there.”

Still, the question, again, becomes: Will the average person use such a service? Webb doesn’t think so. “I think that people want local content for sure –- we know that they do,” she says. “The problem is that they want it in a way that makes sense to them. You can aggregate all you want, but at the end of the day, people want accessible, critical, niche local content that makes sense to them that’s relevant that depends on where they are.”
What All This Means for You, The Journalist

The fact of the matter is: Mobile technology is moving at a breakneck speed. Handsets that are hot at one moment may be completely incompatible with all the newest software a couple of months down the road. So the takeaway here is that you have to be aware of the changing landscape and adjust accordingly, but you don’t have to be a tech fiend.

When it comes to innovations and services like geo-location and the iPad and various and sundry apps, make sure that they are on your radar. Use the ones that suit your needs and at least test out the others. Casting an eye to the horizon –- while also keeping your feet square on terra firma –- is essential to staying relevant in the local news game.

San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, Sacramento, El Dorado Hills, Roseville, Granite Bay, Rocklin, Lincoln, Loomis, Elk Grove, Natomas, Citrus Heights, Folsom, Fair Oaks, Auburn, Placerville, Lodi, Stockton, Modesto, Galt, Tracy, Plumas Lake, Marysville, Yuba City, Chico, Redding, Red Bluff, Vacaville, Woodland, Davis, Dixon, Fairfield, Nevada City, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Reno, Sparks, Tahoe, Lake Tahoe, South Lake Tahoe, Truckee, Toledo, Oregon, Cleveland, Detroit, Charlotte, Cornelius, Gastonia, Concord, Hickory, Salisbury, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami

View the Original article